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Balancing Act: memoir of a Teenage Breakdown
BALANCING ACT: memoir of a Teenage Breakdown
In the 1970s, outside the town of Mahone Bay, Nova Scotia, Canada, Barbara Ann is thirteen, going into grade seven and starting a new school.
She wants what most other teenage girls want: the right hair, the right clothes, the right friends, the right boyfriend, and everything else that leads to love and happiness.
Innocence allows her to believe it’s all easily within her grasp, with the only obstacle being her over-controlling mother.
She fights and pushes against boundaries to gain the freedom she wants.
Each step a power struggle between mother and daughter.
When Barbara Ann finally meets a boy and believes all her dreams are coming true, her life shatters in ways she never saw coming.
In desperation she tries escaping her pain, but instead her anxiety and depression increase and she spirals into a “nervous breakdown”.
It is in the midst of all of this that Barbara Ann learns the depths of her mother’s betrayal and the realization of just how much she’s lost, and the need to find inner strength.
Readers will be torn between understanding a mother's interference in her daughter’s life and her daughter's emotional stress caused by the mother’s interference.
Readers will enter the world of a teenage girl and experience what life’s like from her point of view… experiencing anxiety, loss, grief and depression.
In the 1970s, outside the town of Mahone Bay, Nova Scotia, Canada, Barbara Ann is thirteen, going into grade seven and starting a new school.
She wants what most other teenage girls want: the right hair, the right clothes, the right friends, the right boyfriend, and everything else that leads to love and happiness.
Innocence allows her to believe it’s all easily within her grasp, with the only obstacle being her over-controlling mother.
She fights and pushes against boundaries to gain the freedom she wants.
Each step a power struggle between mother and daughter.
When Barbara Ann finally meets a boy and believes all her dreams are coming true, her life shatters in ways she never saw coming.
In desperation she tries escaping her pain, but instead her anxiety and depression increase and she spirals into a “nervous breakdown”.
It is in the midst of all of this that Barbara Ann learns the depths of her mother’s betrayal and the realization of just how much she’s lost, and the need to find inner strength.
Readers will be torn between understanding a mother's interference in her daughter’s life and her daughter's emotional stress caused by the mother’s interference.
Readers will enter the world of a teenage girl and experience what life’s like from her point of view… experiencing anxiety, loss, grief and depression.
224 pages, Kindle Edition
First published January 1, 2017
3 people are currently reading
18 people want to read
About the author
Barbara Carter
9 books59 followersBARBARA CARTER
Visual Artist. Author. Instructor.
Barbara Carter writes real life stories that reads like good fiction.
Raw and real. Telling it like it is.
Dealing with issues we often do not want to talk about.
How we relate and how we fail to relate to one another.
Each book can be read as a stand alone, or in series order.
Though the first three books work best if read in order.
Carter's focus is to go back in order to heal and move forward.
Each memoir can be read as a stand alone, or in order.
Barbara Carter regularly published on Medium.com
https://medium.com/@barbaracarter_631...
Visual Artist. Author. Instructor.
Barbara Carter writes real life stories that reads like good fiction.
Raw and real. Telling it like it is.
Dealing with issues we often do not want to talk about.
How we relate and how we fail to relate to one another.
Each book can be read as a stand alone, or in series order.
Though the first three books work best if read in order.
Carter's focus is to go back in order to heal and move forward.
Each memoir can be read as a stand alone, or in order.
Barbara Carter regularly published on Medium.com
https://medium.com/@barbaracarter_631...
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
January 16, 2018
This is Barbara Ann Carter’s second memoir of her life on the South Shore of Nova Scotia. It takes place in the first half of the 1970’s and covers 7th – through the end of 9th grade. During this time the author makes and discards friendships, discovers boys – including a long distance sweetie she pined for, all while she continues to question her family, her mother and all the authority figures in her life. In short, it’s a nightmare time of life for any girl and in the author’s case, a time of breaking down and slowing summoning the strength to move forward.
The first thing I noticed about this second memoir compared to her first, Floating in Saltwater: A memoir A Young Girl's Search for Answers ,was that the author is now specific about names, place names, and dates. And no wonder. She is writing from the point of view of bright teenager who now knows things and is eager to discover more. School is a necessary evil where she must go to see her friends and to get out of the house. The constrictions she feels with her controlling mother and a houseful of boarders and foster siblings are all vividly described.
I am immersed whenever I read her writing. She sets the scenes so well. I can see the mud-soaked and frayed bell-bottom jeans that were fashionably long. I smell the cigarette smoke and taste the harsh vanilla she and her friends drank to get “high” during lunch break. I can hear Janis Joplin blaring out from a hi-fi that used to only play Hank Snow records. That was a time when the generation gap seemed huge, and insurmountable and no more so when the author is grappling with big emotions and no one seemed to understand her (or even listen).
Boys are huge part of this memoir – first wanting a boyfriend and all the crazy stuff jr. high girls would do like following a boy around. Then there were actual boys: Steve from Bridgewater and Will from Virginia who came one summer to spend with his grandmother. I loved the descriptions of the intense young love the author felt for Will. It leaps off the page. Will became such a huge presence in the author’s mind because he wasn’t there – they had letters. And what sweet letters they were.
The author’s mother broke them up and hid his letters, causing Barbara Ann to have a breakdown. Will gave her hope and not knowing what he thought of her after her father threatened him caused her to go into a major depression. Knowing her mother would betray her and stop at nothing to control her also contributed.
I found it so symbolic that her first true love’s name was “Will.” With such a controlling mother, the author had no choice but to rebel or risk losing her identity (an identity she was just becoming acquainted with). She had to have the will to fight the craziness (and hypocrisy) she was expected to just accept without question like a "good girl."
The author conveys that anger of a teenager so well and makes it understandable. Because behind that anger is fear – fear no one will love you. Fear of what the future holds. Fear of not being able to get through a boring day at school without screaming your head off. I had to laugh at the palmistry books and the witchcraft, etc. . . We would stand at the bookstore and read Linda Goodman’s Love Signs to see if the boy we had a crush on was compatible. When you’re young you don’t * know * things will turn out – but you want to *know. *
This was a lovely slice of life to read. At times funny (they tried smoking dried banana peels at one point, Will’s dead baby jokes – I forgot all about them) and sad (Barbara Ann felt so deeply and her mother was so flawed).
I want to thank the author for sending me a copy of this book and I hope she continues to write her story. I am invested in all of her characters and want to know more.
The first thing I noticed about this second memoir compared to her first, Floating in Saltwater: A memoir A Young Girl's Search for Answers ,was that the author is now specific about names, place names, and dates. And no wonder. She is writing from the point of view of bright teenager who now knows things and is eager to discover more. School is a necessary evil where she must go to see her friends and to get out of the house. The constrictions she feels with her controlling mother and a houseful of boarders and foster siblings are all vividly described.
I am immersed whenever I read her writing. She sets the scenes so well. I can see the mud-soaked and frayed bell-bottom jeans that were fashionably long. I smell the cigarette smoke and taste the harsh vanilla she and her friends drank to get “high” during lunch break. I can hear Janis Joplin blaring out from a hi-fi that used to only play Hank Snow records. That was a time when the generation gap seemed huge, and insurmountable and no more so when the author is grappling with big emotions and no one seemed to understand her (or even listen).
Boys are huge part of this memoir – first wanting a boyfriend and all the crazy stuff jr. high girls would do like following a boy around. Then there were actual boys: Steve from Bridgewater and Will from Virginia who came one summer to spend with his grandmother. I loved the descriptions of the intense young love the author felt for Will. It leaps off the page. Will became such a huge presence in the author’s mind because he wasn’t there – they had letters. And what sweet letters they were.
The author’s mother broke them up and hid his letters, causing Barbara Ann to have a breakdown. Will gave her hope and not knowing what he thought of her after her father threatened him caused her to go into a major depression. Knowing her mother would betray her and stop at nothing to control her also contributed.
I found it so symbolic that her first true love’s name was “Will.” With such a controlling mother, the author had no choice but to rebel or risk losing her identity (an identity she was just becoming acquainted with). She had to have the will to fight the craziness (and hypocrisy) she was expected to just accept without question like a "good girl."
The author conveys that anger of a teenager so well and makes it understandable. Because behind that anger is fear – fear no one will love you. Fear of what the future holds. Fear of not being able to get through a boring day at school without screaming your head off. I had to laugh at the palmistry books and the witchcraft, etc. . . We would stand at the bookstore and read Linda Goodman’s Love Signs to see if the boy we had a crush on was compatible. When you’re young you don’t * know * things will turn out – but you want to *know. *
This was a lovely slice of life to read. At times funny (they tried smoking dried banana peels at one point, Will’s dead baby jokes – I forgot all about them) and sad (Barbara Ann felt so deeply and her mother was so flawed).
I want to thank the author for sending me a copy of this book and I hope she continues to write her story. I am invested in all of her characters and want to know more.
January 24, 2020
This book picks up where the first book left off and covers the early teenage years.
Mama hasn’t changed, but it’s nice to see Papa and Dorothy taking Barbara Ann’s side a bit more or in the least helping her.
Can’t wait to read the next!
Mama hasn’t changed, but it’s nice to see Papa and Dorothy taking Barbara Ann’s side a bit more or in the least helping her.
Can’t wait to read the next!
June 30, 2018
I thoroughly enjoyed this book. I was engaged from the first page. Lots of period detail and the characters were very believable. Lots of teenage angst - friendships, boyfriends. Poor Barbara had a roller-coaster of emotions to deal with and a very distant mother who seemed uncaring. But I would've liked to know a bit more about how Barbara's life worked out in the end.
Currently reading
January 12, 2018I met Barbara Carter about 1990 at a Women's Spiritual Group. She was a young mother of three energetic children, living in the home converted from that very boathouse that we've all come to know, looking after all her family responsibilities, because she was married to a fisherman who was away more than he was home. Not only that, but she was still living across the road from Mother and handling whatever crises and drama emanated from that domain on any occasion, while still having time to be a practicing artist.
At first, she was pretty quiet at the Sisters' monthly meetings as was I, feeling we were both novices in the spirit realm, though intensely interested. Barbara would ask unusual questions that really made us think, because of her desire to understand better how Life worked. On a few occasions I heard her laugh and it was so infectious that I started a mission to make her laugh whenever possible. We gradually worked ourselves into a pair of shit disturbers, saying irreverent things and laughing when really we were seeking to understand reverence in our own lives.
We started chumming outside of Sisters and I began to follow her artistic processes with her memory quilts and then fabric pieces she created to reflect her own inner experiences. It was a therapy for her to delve into her childhood stories to dig out the truth of what happened and replace the stories that she was taught to carry, which had never jived well with her own being.
I was brought up Presbyterian and the girl Barbara Ann in "Balancing Act" would not have been someone my parents would have permitted me to be friends with, acting up out of boredom and a feeling that people and life were neglecting her. Except Will. As steadfast as he could possibly be and unfailing in the expression of his love to Barbara Ann. And how horrid to have this delicate sharing with another human being ripped away in the vulgarest of ways by her steadfastly incorrigible Mother. No wonder Barbara Ann crashed. The miracle is that she didn't let her take her away.
Barbara Carter is one of the most resilient people I have ever met. We can only shake our heads to think of such a creative, buoyant, loving girl being able to survive in the chaos of her childhood home.
Barbara's earliest form of searching was visual, in the various phases and forms her art took over the years. It is truly remarkable that she has carried on her searching and journeying into the word form. I can't wait to read the next episode, which she is working on now, because I lived some of that phase with her - I think.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews